Political Decision-making Process Research Articles

The social impact management plan as a tool for local planning: Case study: Mining in Northern Finland

The paper discusses social impact management plan (SIMP) as a planning tool for communities to continuously and adaptively manage and address the diverse social changes caused by mining developments. It introduces an empirical case study, where the SIMP is applied to deal with the possibilities and problems that the mining boom has created in a rural, sparsely populated municipality in Northern Europe. The making of the SIMP n the Sodankylä Municipality was the first community-led policy programme focused on mining in Finland. After collaborative planning with relevant stakeholders and political decision-making process, a SIMP laying out shared visions and mutually agreed actions was given the status of an official policy programme in 2018. However, there are several uncertainties related to the realization of the SIMP. From the viewpoint of governance dependencies, there are still differing opinions among the local stakeholders, including the mining companies, about what socially sustainable mining actually means and demands. Also, communities are often left with no other choice than to adapt to the interdependencies inherent in local governance, national legislation and politics. They also have to get used to international economic fluctuations and to the uncertainties intrinsic to the global production and consumption of metals. Nevertheless, the SIMP is a worthwhile effort to achieve the best local solutions related to mining in the northernmost parts of Europe.

Retro Aesthetics, Affect, and Nostalgia Effects in Recent US-American Cinema: The Cases of La La Land (2016) and The Shape of Water (2017)

Nostalgia and retro are phenomena of modernism and modernization that are currently booming. This goes for political decision-making processes as much as for popular culture where retro aesthetics is the dominant mode of design: Both appear driven by ‘longings for a time that never was.’ While research on nostalgia and retro abound, nostalgia still remains a vague and undertheorized concept seemingly identical with retro. Engaging the ways in which Damien Chazelle’s 2016 movie La La Land and Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water of 2017 produce and interrogate affects, this essay shows how film allows us to make distinctions that the proliferating research on nostalgia and retro often fail to deliver. As we zoom in on how both films reference iconic moments in film history, it becomes evident that retro aesthetics operates in distinctively diverse manners. While La La Land interrogates cinema’s “nostalgia for nostalgia”, The Shape of Water reclaims nostalgia as a mode of social bonding. In this way, both movies foreground how the dynamics of nostalgia, at best, moves forward, not back. Film studies, in turn, can shed considerable light on how both nostalgia and retro work—and why they sell so well.

Water accounts in decision-making processes of urban water management: Benefits, limitations and implications in a real implementation

Data management for decision support is a challenging aspect of any decision-making process. Water management is not an exception. The objective of this paper is to present a procedure for compiling water accounts at an urban level to support political decision-making processes with solid foundations. The System of Environmental-Economic Accounting for Water (SEEA-Water) was used for this purpose. The case study of Santo Domingo de los Colorados in Ecuador serves to illustrate the benefits and the limitations of the available data and to identify data gaps. The compilation of the SEEA-Water at a local level is a pioneering work. The results reveal the water flows (from the environment to the economy, within the economy, from the economy to the environment), water quality, and the contribution of water resources to different economic activities for the period 2014–2015 at the local level. The information was categorized for the water supply industry, the sewage industry, for the rest of the industries and services, and for the households. On the basis of our empirical example, this paper shows how SEEA-Water underpins informed decision-making on urban water management and serves to improve the quality of water-related data.

Concordance Civil–Military Relations in Ghana’s Fourth Republic

Civil–military relations in Ghana have a chequered history; since the first coup of 1966, there had been four military takeovers of political power, in 1969, 1972, 1979, and 1980. Relations are thawing, as evidenced by the fact that there has been no overt attempt at overthrowing a government since 1992. This article employs a qualitative approach to data collection and analysis to explain civil–military relations in Ghana’s Fourth Republic (1992–2018). It argues that there is agreement among three societal partners—political elites, military, and the citizenry on four variables; social composition of the officer corps, political decision–making, and recruitment and military style. Yet focus of the civil–military discourse has been on political elites and military. These two are vital to the political decision process. Although the third partner, the citizenry has a meaningful voice, military–society relations fluctuates over time. There is mixed perceptions among Ghanaian about the armed forces.

Lobbying by association: The case of autism and the controversy over packing therapy in France

The controversy over packing therapy used in psychiatry was studied here to illustrate how leading associations can influence public health policies. The main French associations of parents with autistic children succeeded in obtaining the prohibition of packing, announced by the French Secretary of State to the Ministry of Health in April 2016. Parents and professionals who had observed the positive effects of packing when nothing else worked for their part wondered what could be done for self-harming patients. The political authorities followed the opinion of the main associations of parents with autistic children at the expense of that of professionals. In this paper, the actions and discourse of the associations against packing are explored, as are the arguments of the psychiatrists who defend packing therapy. The different phases in the controversy from the first opposition in 2005 and the role of opinion leaders in associations are analyzed. The strategies to discredit psychiatry and to promote behavioral methods are also studied to understand the shift in the balance of power from professionals to association leaders. The mobilization of the associations prompted some psychiatrists to conduct evidence-based research and to formalize their practice. The controversy over packing, involving political decision-making processes, ethical issues and clinical questions, enables us to illustrate a case of lobbying by associations.

Conditional legitimacy: How turnout, majority size, and outcome affect perceptions of legitimacy in European Union membership referendums

This conjoint study investigates the type of mandate a referendum confers in the political decision-making process. While a majority of citizens in general believe that the government should follow the results of a referendum on European Union membership, its perceived legitimacy in the eyes of the public heavily depends upon the level of turnout, the size of the majority, and the outcome of the specific referendum in question. Thus, whether a referendum legitimizes a political decision in the eyes of the public is conditional upon these three dimensions.

Do local politicians really want collaborative governance?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to assess, empirically, the opinions of local politicians concerning citizen participation in collaborative governance processes. Elected politicians play a key role as gatekeepers when it comes to the political impact of participatory initiatives, and by examining their attitudes, it is possible to get an understanding of perceived challenges from the perspective of elected representatives.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical findings come from an ongoing project studying democratic innovation, the primary objective of which is to understand how local politicians think about efforts to increase or deepen citizen participation in political decision making. The source of data is interviews with 29 members of the executive boards of four Norwegian municipalities.FindingsAlthough most of the politicians acknowledge that good reasons exist to facilitate greater citizen involvement, they are particularly worried about figuring out how to realise “inclusiveness” and “popular control” as two democratic goods. They appear to think most people are not motivated to participate; thus, they do not think it is possible or desirable to interact more directly with citizens in collaborative processes to develop shared recommendations for new solutions to public problems.Research limitations/implicationsThe municipalities in this study are not a representative sample of Norwegian municipalities, as each has expressed an interest in democratic innovation. Thus, they would be expected to have more positive attitudes than the average municipality.Originality/valueGiven that elected representatives decide whether and how to involve citizens in political decision-making processes, their attitudes are crucial to understanding and explaining collaborative governance efforts in western democracies.

الديمقراطية الإدارية والمجتمع المدني في الجزائر

One Of The Constant Facts Is That The Existence Of Civil Society Organizations In Any Country Has Exceeded The Concept Of Perception Or Presumption, Even Under The Relatively Old Political Systems, Which Are Considered Part Of Their Structures And Components Against The Concept Of Civil Society Associations And Alike. The Reason Behind That Is Based On What Is Agreed Upon The Content Of Absolute Ruling, And The Lack Of Recognition Of Democratic Practices Through The Components Of Civil Society. Thus, The Latter Has Gone Beyond Its Development, And Even Develop Its Methods Of Dependence To Power And Absolute Support Without An Assessment Of Its Policy, To The Actual And Effective Participation In The Political Decision-Making Process, And Then The Administrative Decision, And With A Kind Of Objectivity To The Extreme, Which Resulted In The Participation Of Civil Society, Organizations In Administrative Management Within The State. Key Words - Civil Society,Democratic,Political Decision, Administrative Management, Administrative Democratic.

On the Importance of the Philosophy of Well-being

Objective: A weak approach to well-being policy means that government’s goal should be to choose policies that make people better off over those that make them worse off, with other things being equal. The question is what kind of underlying assumptions should be fulfilled to achieve this goal. In particular, do policymakers have to agree on some substantive theory of well-being, like hedonism or objective list theory, or persist in choosing the formal preference satisfaction theory of well-being? According to Haybron and Tiberius (Well-being Policy: What Standard of Well-being?, “Journal of the American Philosophical Association” 2015, vol. 1, no 4), we can avoid raising such questions by drawing a strict distinction between the varieties of concepts or theories of well-being and policy processes aiming at promoting the well-being of citizens. They claim that such policies are “justified only when they are grounded in the conceptions of the well-being of those on whose behalf policy is being made”, and call this approach “pragmatic subjectivism” (p. 713). From their reasoning it follows that policymakers need not develop the appropriate concept of well-being, but can leave it to citizens to choose. The paper examines Haybron and Tiberius’ proposal and defends the claim that while theoretically we can avoid discussing the concept of well-being when we follow pragmatic subjectivism, we cannot do this in practice.Research Design & Methods: The paper uses an argument analysis.Findings: One way or another we will have to move in the direction of purely formalistic preference satisfaction theory or some substantive approaches like hedonism or objectivism. If we do not want to take for granted the incoherent intuitive concepts of well-being people hold, and because “well-being” is a normative concept, we have to develop philosophical theories of well-being that openly reveal their strengths and weaknesses.Implications / Recommendations: To facilitate the process of political decision-making, philosophically informed measures of well-being are needed. To a certain extent, those measures already exist, and they are widely applied by policymakers, e.g., GDP per capita, the Human Development Index or various happiness / subjective well-being indices. However, they seem to be either insufficient or purely philosophically informed.Contribution: The paper contributes to the development of the analysis of well-being and measures its philosophical underpinnings.

Industry 4.0 and Climate Change—Exploring the Science-Policy Gap

The paper aims to explore the gaps and overlaps between statements of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) working at the intersection of climate change, sustainable energy, and industrial development regarding the role of Industry 4.0 for climate change mitigation and the scientific literature addressing the energy and resource efficiency of Industry 4.0. To fulfill this objective, we conduct a two-tier review of relevant literature from both IGOs as well as academia. The analysis of documents from IGOs shows that Industry 4.0 is strongly associated with energy efficiency potentials that could contribute to climate change mitigation and more sustainable energy use in the industrial sector. Based on a review of the scientific literature, however, the paper concludes that it is currently not possible to validate this assumption and provide concrete figures since analyses providing a more comprehensive picture of potential energy savings, including possible negative effects and rebounds, are lacking. We suggest that these issues be addressed in further research, e.g., through concrete case studies that go beyond the assessment of single Industry 4.0 technologies. Furthermore, efforts should be strengthened to communicate findings from technology-centered research into political strategy-building and decision-making processes and, at the same time, raise awareness in the technological domain for the information needs of policymakers.

Political decision-making and the decline of Canadian peacekeeping

ABSTRACTThis article explores the reasons behind Canada’s declining participation in United Nations peacekeeping operations. It proposes a decision-making model that explains how politicians assess opportunities to commit personnel to peacekeeping missions by balancing their policy objectives with the pressures of electoral politics. Emphasizing the importance of voters in political decision-making processes, it argues that participation in peacekeeping is dependent on three key factors: a belief in the value of peacekeeping in principle; a belief in the value of a given peacekeeping operation; and risk aversion in response to the potential costs of peacekeeping. Tracing Canada’s declining participation in peacekeeping operations since the 1990s, it particularly focuses on how this calculus has, in different ways, limited Canada’s involvement in peacekeeping under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government and Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, arguing that the former undervalued peacekeeping as a means of obtaining its foreign policy objectives and as a feature of national identity, minimizing the perceived benefits of participation, while the latter has focused on the inherent risks of peacekeeping despite a professed commitment to peacekeeping in principle, maximizing the perceived costs of further personnel commitments. The decisions of successive Canadian governments have led to a free-rider problem in which Canada is willing to enjoy the benefits of peacekeeping but unwilling to bear the costs.

Democratic innovations in Central and Eastern Europe: expanding the research agenda

ABSTRACTDemocratic innovations have recently gained momentum throughout the world. An increasing number of such practices takes place and coincides with a visible grow in the number of analyses focusing on the forms, functioning and effects of democratic innovations. In spite of these developments, a great deal of research on democratic innovations have largely neglected Central and Eastern Europe. This special issue of Contemporary Politics adds to the existing literature on democratic innovations by focusing on such attempts to deepen citizen participation in the political decision-making process in Central and Eastern Europe. Its attempt to expand the research agenda relies on new empirical evidence relative to three major forms of democratic innovations (direct democracy, deliberative democracy and citizens’ involvement with the aid of ICTs).

Duch d’Hondta w Strasburgu. Zasada proporcjonalnej dystrybucji stanowisk w Parlamencie Europejskim

Proportionality is an intrinsic feature of parliamentary democracy. It is a principle stating that, depending on its size, each political party has a commensurate ability to influence legislature. This is confirmed by comparative studies which show that proportionality is a significant principle in the distribution of parliamentary posts in a majority of West European states. Consequently, even deputies from the smallest parties can chair commissions or lead sessions of the chambers, and by this token participate in the political decision-making process. This softens the domination of the majority party and – in line with Arend Lijphart’s concept – generates consensual democracy, based on the search for broad compromises instead of simply outvoting the opponent. Given this picture, a question emerges whether the situation is similar in the representative institution of the European Union, i.e. the European Parliament. The paper answers this question positively. The standard of proportionality has strong roots in the European Parliament forming a fundamental principle expressed in terms of d’Hondt’s formula applied to distribute posts among different political groups. This mainly concerns the division of the members of the Presidium and commission chairmen, who exercise the most important decisive functions. The implementation of the idea of appropriate representation may not be ideal, but divergences are rare, insignificant and usually they result from political bargaining that favors smaller fractions. The proportionality principle is also binding when distributing parliamentary posts inside political groups. There is a strong and positive correlation between the size of national delegations and the number of key posts they obtain in the Parliament – members of the Presidium, commission chairmen and coordinators. Only in the case of the latter is proportionality subjected to certain distortions, following from their key political importance. This, however, does not interfere with the general picture of symmetric participation of national groups in appointing parliamentary posts. In conclusion, the standard of proportionality allows all political groups to adequately participate in the work of the European Parliament, which deserves to be emphasized, the more so, as it is not formalized.

Forms of democracy and economic growth volatility

Using a panel of 140 countries over the 1975–2007 period, we disaggregate democracies across five institutional dimensions (government forms, electoral rules, state forms, number of veto players, and age of democracies), to study the precise forms of democracy that may explain the lower economic growth volatility (EGV) in democracies compared to dictatorships, usually emphasized by the literature. We find that, while all government forms decrease EGV to the same extent, proportional electoral rules outperform majoritarian and mixed electoral rules, suggesting a role for a more inclusive political decision-making process. In addition, EGV is significantly lower in unitary states, suggesting a role for a limited separation of power between the central government and the local authorities, while the effect of the number of veto players and the age of democracies is significant only in developed countries. Consequently, the choice between various forms of democracy may not be neutral for EGV, and, possibly, for countries' development path.

Impact of the ESDM on the development of children with ASD in a European French-speaking population: First results of the intervention implementation

Introduction Early intervention for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the European French-speaking countries is heterogeneous and poorly evaluated to date. Early intervention units applying the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) for toddlers and young children with ASD have been created in France and Belgium to improve this situation. It is essential to evaluate this intervention for the political decision-making process regarding ASD interventions in European French-speaking countries. We selected the implementation of a 12-hour ESDM intervention for children with ASD over a 2-year period as part of the IDEA trial. This ESDM intervention can be complex to implement. It is subject to many organizational constraints. It relies on a strong involvement of both ESDM professional teams and parents to implement this individual intervention adapted to each child. It is therefore important at this stage of the IDEA study to evaluate the ESDM intervention implementation. Methods The IDEA trial is an ongoing multicentre, randomised controlled trial, using a two-stage Zelen design. Children included are aged 15 to 36 months, diagnosed with ASD and with a Developmental Quotient (DQ) of 30 or above on the Mullen Scale of Early Learning (MSEL). We use a stratified minimisation randomisation at a ratio 1:2 in favour of the control group. The sample size requires is 180 children (120 in the control and 60 in the intervention group). The intervention evaluated is a 12-hour per week ESDM by trained therapists (10 hours in the centre and 2 hours in the toddlers’ natural environment). The control group receives care available in the community. Our aim was to evaluate the ESDM intervention implementation for children in the intervention group, by evaluating the number of sessions and the number of hours ESDM conducted and analyzing reasons for absence and organization of centers. Results To date, 131 children have been included: 88 randomized children in the control group, 43 randomized in the intervention group. At inclusion, children’ characteristics in the intervention group were mean age 29.8 months, the level of behavioral change and severity of autistic symptoms at ADOS score of 7.6 (max score 10.0) and developmental quotient at Mullen score of 45.9 (max score 59.1). ESDM intervention sessions were completed for 65% of the children. Seventy-five percent of the reasons for cancellation were related to the organization of ESDM professional teams (holidays, training/absences of professionals). The average number of intervention hours delivered was of 8 hours per week. The average number of hours delivered increased (from 6.6 hours to 9.6 hours per week) during the months of ESDM intervention implementation, suggesting a gradual implementation. Conclusions The evaluation of the intervention implementation showed that children received on average 4 hours less ESDM intervention than initially planned by the protocol. The reasons for canceling sessions related to families are limited (25%), which shows a strong motivation and involvement on their part. The results highlight the factors limiting the ESDM intervention implementation (necessary adaptation period, organizational constraints of the professional teams).

Komunikasi Politik Anggota Legislatif Perempuan di Kota Majalengka

Political communication is considered as a process of conveying political messages from the political elite to the community. In return, the conveyed political message obtains the expected response such as the process of political decision-making in a democratic, transparent, and accountable. Political communication of women legislators in the policy has distinctive characteristics for each member. This is due to the cultural factors and party policy systems that are very influential on the carrier of women legislators. This study aims to determine the political communication of female legislators in the budget preparation policy of Community Empowerment, Women and Family Planning Board in Assembly at Majalengka Regency . The unit of analysis carried out in this research includes the communication of undertaken process related to communicators, the contents of messages that were conveyed, the media used, the communication objectives, as well as the preparation and formulation of strategies in the budgeting policy of the Community Empowerment, Women and Family Planning Board conducted by legislators of Majalengka Regency.

Women Empowerment and Governance in Bangladesh

This article is based on a research undertaken to promote and facilitate linkages between gender, poverty reduction and good governance at the local level. The 569 unions under study were included from Dhaka, Barisal, Chittagong, Khulna, Rajshahi and Sylhet divisions. The research focused on analysis by combining feminist research techniques such as participant field observation, key informant interviews, focus group discussions and case studies of women’s life history. The findings showed that most of the women were under the control of their husbands, and they were mere proxies. Women’s voices in governance were not so far heard due to their under-representation and non-participation in institutional structures of decision-making. In governance, women still had limited and insufficient access to resources, public debate and political decision-making processes.

When rivers go to court: The Anthropocene in organization studies through the lens of Jacques Rancière

The overarching purpose of this article is to add to the theorization of the Anthropocene in organization studies by investigating how long-term planetary concerns can be better accounted for in organizing. To do so, the article draws on the scholarship of Jacques Rancière to show how the dichotomy of nature and culture shapes the dominant framings of organizing, and to outline premises for artistic, scholarly and political interventions into the status quo that could aid the process of making our entanglements with the geo-biophysical politically viable. The article concludes that the Anthropocene can add to a renewal of organizational and political decision-making processes through a radical rethinking of the liberal humanist separation of nature and culture and related concepts such as democracy and political subjecthood.

Atores e instituições na formulação da Política de Mudanças Climáticas no Brasil

Observou-se que um mesmo modelo de governança foi configurado na política brasileira de mudança doclima, caracterizando em comum três fatores às instituições responsáveis por essa política: (1) diversidadeinstitucional, (2) cooperação e (3) competição política. Por meio de um estudo de caso, buscou-se tomar,como unidade de análise, a Comissão Interministerial de Mudança Global do Clima (CIMMGC). O objetivofoi observar em que medida a maior diversidade institucional, caracterizada pela elevada inclusividadede atores políticos e o reforço de accountability no processo político decisório, fomentou mais cooperaçãoe menos competição política entre os atores políticos envolvidos na CIMMGC. Os resultados apontaram que a maior inclusividade política no processo decisório da política brasileira de mudança do clima nãoincorreu em ausência de governabilidade democrática. No caso da CIMMGC, o modelo consociativo dapolítica brasileira de mudança do clima reforçou mecanismos de accountability no processo político,sem perder, em contrapartida, dinamismo institucional e capacidade decisória nos objetivos políticosoutorgados à instituição pela Política e Plano Nacional sobre Mudança do Clima.

Equity in practice? Evaluations of equity in planning for bus rapid transit

The distribution of transportation benefits is mediated through planning professionals and elected officials, who frame the goals of these investments and can prioritize the importance of fairness in decision-making. Despite increasing evidence of the importance of transportation equity, there are broad questions about how equity principles factor into planning processes. This work provides an empirical analysis of the role of transit equity in planning for BRT investments in three Canadian metropolitan areas. Our findings show that transit equity rarely figured into the design and planning of BRT systems and there is a lack of clarity in both defining equity and determining how it should be integrated in planning processes. Most definitions of transit equity focused on the equal distribution of resources for all groups, rather than consideration of transit-dependent riders. Equity outcomes were also in conflict with other goals, as BRT systems were viewed largely as a tool for encouraging development and focused on attracting car drivers to transit. This paper argues that there needs to be a better understanding of the values and priorities of those involved in professional and political decision-making processes if transit equity goals are to be realized.